“Why buy American?”  You ask.  "The other stuff is cheaper."

Yes, that can sometimes appear to be the case, however if does not mean you are purchasing the best value and safest product for your money.   It may depend on what item you are purchasing and from what discount chaim you are currently shopping.   The Product Recalls on Imports are at an all time high, as far too many imported products from China and other parts of Asia are made using dangerous chemicals you don't want to know about.     Buying American Made Goods not only feeds and strengthens the lifeblood of our own national and local economy, but makes life safer for you, the American Consumer.    Besides the safety factors involved, when you buy mostly foreign goods, you are enhancing another countries economy ---with very little staying inside your own country.    Your local immediate economy often receives little or no benefit.    By purchasing Made in U.S.A., you strengthen yourself, your local community, and your country's overall economy.   And more, you support American Workers just like yourself.

When we buy and use foreign products, some financial pundits point to the fact that we invest in the overall world economy, but there is clearly a huge difference between investing in foreign companies and flat out being overrun by foreign interests and even individual domestic interests that are only concerned in bilking you from your money.  Be very careful You never confuse or combine these two separate concepts.   The more manufacturing industry we lose to foreign factories, we place ourselves ---our children ---and our economic future at risk of becoming entirely obliged, and even subservient to controlling foreign interests.   If that is what you fancy or just don't object, then buy all the foreign goods you can.   But don't say you were not warned, and you should not complain when those same foreign interests start dictating to You, to Your Employer, Your Educators, and to Your Elected Officials on every level.   Manufacturing means money and we all know that kind of money brings power and influence.

If we lose our manufacturing base to foreign workers, then the shift of real power begins.   Remember, World War II was won because America was an industrial giant, able to manufacture the goods needed to carry the battle to the enemy, and win that horrible conflict. 

Today, our industry is nothing compared to then.   We are not powerless yet, but U.S. Industry is all to often being closed down in favor of moving jobs to oversea markets.    American Jobs are disappearing fast and with it, the generated money those jobs bring to our communities.   Ask yourself:  ‘Just what to these Super Discount Stores put back into our community?”.   They will tell you they put thousands of dollars in wages and insurance into your town or city.    Plus, they will also tell you that they offer you the convenience of lower pricing.    But, they will not tell you that they have driven thousands of small businesses out of business, local employers who once supported your local area.    The Super Discounts will tell you that they are huge employers with the local community well served with an integral job base.    But they will not tell you that their employees are mostly part time, with many not receiving enough hours to feed their families and little to no right to any insurance plan.  The Super discounts will not even admit that the huge employer base does not make enough money to shop anywhere else either.    Want proof?  Well, just look at the employee parking lot and observe the cars these employees drive.  Look at the clothes they wear.   That will tell you what they can afford to buy and how much extra cash they might have in their pockets. 

We have several in our community too.   One well known Super Discount claims to be the largest Employer within our huge county.    They don’t tell the American Public that most of their so-called part-time employees have not worked a single day for over the last 5 to 15 years.   They don’t tell the American Public why these so called listed workers are kept and retained on their books even though they have not been called into work for over the last 5 to 10 years.  However, those names are all listed as part-time employees and well  ---you now get the idea.  You see, bragging rights as the largest employer is good public relations, aids in reaping local subsidies, and gains critical political leverage with city councils and county commissioners.

More over, this huge Super Discount Store has never given to our community, supported our schools teams, helped the elderly with anything, supported any local projects, taken part in our celebrations, our parades, or started any local programs for any reason what-so-ever.  They don't even support a little league anything.   When our service personnel came home from serving in Iraq, everyone put out welcome home signs and allowed their employees to attend the parade and gathering ceremonies.  The only thing our Discount Chain did was have a Special Sale that day.  But, they have sure taken money from this community and sent it to another country, because everything they sell is foreign made.   The CEO’s have lined their pockets with our local cash, and lined the pockets of foreign interests as well.   They have not given anything to our local community.   Our downtown has turned into a walking mall for professional people, coffee shops, a senior center, and many empty buildings.

Unfortunately, far too many other American CEO’s have copied the Super Discount Store’s manual for doing business.   Dump the American paid workers, close the American factory, and have the product made in China.   Why pay the American wages when you can have it made in China for $.50 a week.   And they call this competition?

Lee, Black and Decker, even your Golf Clubs and Softball Bats are being made overseas!   No American workers collect wages to make anything Nike sells.   Shoppers claim they demand a YKK Zipper on their clothes, but we are sorry to report, even they are made overseas now.

The U.S. Textile Industry is also very sick and almost non-existent.  Look now at the very clothes you are wearing or inside your closet, and count how many articles you possess that sport a ‘Made in USA’ label.  How many can You find?

Why is that?   Huge and market dominate Discount Stores have done everything possible to lead the way in killing the U.S. Textile Industry.   At first, they sold U.S. goods, signing exclusive agreements with many factories, pledging to purchase everything that individual factory could produce, IF the product could be produced at a lower price.   The lower price demand was predicated on the factory having a buyer that would buy everything the factory made.

Sounds like a sweetheart deal, doesn’t it.  The factory CEO’s and managers did to.  Even Union managers went along with this pledge.

Within these agreements, the huge Discount Stores demanded the industry close all other accounts with other buyers and handle the Discount Chain exclusive to everyone else.   Long time customers of these factories were told goodbye in favor of the newer 'Exclusive' big time contracts signed with the Discount Chains.   Why do you need other customers when the discount Stores will buy everything your workers produce?   However, it was later they learned their exclusive indenture would later prove dicey and perilous.

The Discount Chain Stores soon requested 'lower production pricing' from the factories involved with them, even to the point of reducing the quality of the products.    This request rapidly turned into an ultimatum with far reaching consequences.    Price is what mattered now, not quality.    "Produce the new specifications and at the Price we want, or we will stop all orders."      When a factory balked at the new ultimatum, the Discount Chain Store abandoned them.     The huge Discount Chain, through previously preset contractual loopholes, arbitrarily canceled all production orders.    In effect, dumping the factory cold with no buyer for it’s production.   For some manufacturers, it meant laying-off as many as 10,000 workers and the closing of all facilities.    At the time, the general public was given the presentation that it was just economic growing pains and that American manufactures needed to learn how to compete within the new market.   At least that was the pretext given.

Sadly, this was a story that was going to repeat itself, again and again.   One American factory after another swooned with glee when the Big Chain Store came knocking at their door, only to find themselves closed after a year or two.  All their American Workers laid off, or just let off with no jobs.

With the older long time customers now gone from the picture, those factories had no one to buy their production.    No sales, no money, and no money meant no jobs.   Workers were laid off and factories were closed at an alarming rate.  Again and again, the American Public was advised that it was just economic growing pains.   The press was filled with stories on how the textile industry needed to shed fat in a modern post industrial world.    They said the American Textile Industry was at fault, that new ways to do business must be learned, new ways to compete must be utilized.   They duped everyone.

With many American textile-manufacturing facilities closed, many factory workers lost their livelihood and their communities lost revenue.   But, the huge Chain Store made even more money and grew even bigger and more powerful.    Power, Money, and Board Room Greed.

Other American Companies who were still in business, bought into the bargain basement production idea and fell over themselves to contract foreign companies to produce, or better yet, re-produce known ‘American Brands’.    That concept effectively laid off even more American workers and closed even more American production facilities.    Why?  Because it was their way to compete with the dominating Chain Stores and to persuade the Discounters to carry their brands.    Everything was now 'on the cheap' so to say, and regrettably, it still is.    Why sell quality when You are being desensitized against it.    They say, "Let them buy the cheap stuff, they'll come back and buy a new replacement in a couple of weeks."   “If it don’t work in 3 months, who cares, we only give them a 30 day warranty anyway.” 

Some CEO’s pulled up entire factories after letting their American workers go home, laid off or just plain fired, and moved their facilities to other countries.    Some even moved their business offices off shore and hired Chinese factories to reproduce the goods to meet Discount Cain production pricing.   Their American workers were out of a job.

Big named producers who are top brands within the American market place, names like Harley Davidson, Lee’s, Nike, Adidas, Penny’s, Sears, and Carhart have all now turned their apparel goods over to foreign interests and production.    

American workers are not paid to produce these goods.   Even American athletes are wearing uniforms someone made on their sewing machine in China for a $.50 a week if that much.  Many more sports uniforms and civilian apparel are now produced in China, Pakistan, Indonesia, India, and Korea.   Because of their slave-like wages and willingness to produce huge quantities of poor product for dominate Brands, these countries are even now eclipsing Japan as a manufacturing power.

For American workers and laborers, it meant not only lost jobs and lively hoods, but for some lost lives.    This also meant that the American Consumer was now swamped with poor quality products.   It also means that there are very few textile products made in America today, to compete with those cheaply made poor quality products.   How can you compete against a foreign made T-Shirt that costs $ .05 cents to make and sells for $14.95 at a major Discount Chain.   But, they have it made in China or Indonesia, using poor fabric, poor thread, and ship it here.   They price it at $19.95, then market it On Sale at $14.95 to fool you into thinking that you are getting it cheap.    Since it only cost a grand total of $ .25 cents and you paid $14.95 for it, you can determine yourself if you think you got a good deal here.  

Still, that is not discount pricing, not in anyone's book.   Just because the article was made in China, does not mean discount pricing. 

Does the American Consumer want clothes that fall apart, just weeks after they buy it?  Most T-shirts, sweatshirts, fleece, and leather goods from foreign manufacturers do in fact, fall apart after a very short time.  They even develop unexplained holes in them, where normal wear cannot even explain why. 

American Shoppers are faced with Dresses and Pants that don’t fit right and ill-fitting Jackets that modern day Americans can’t fit into.      Dress shirts of such poor material they easily tear or just fall apart in a matter of days or weeks.    Then there are those cheap Leather Goods that may not be what they claim and passed off onto unsuspecting Customers.    Yet, that is what today’s Consumer usually finds hanging on the rack of these huge Discount Stores and Chains.   You see, they figure American Consumers are dumb and not sophisticated enough to know real quality goods from the poor quality they shove down consumer throats.

Some Foreign companies pay their people .50 cents an hour, and some even less at .50 cents a day.   Their workers can’t even afford what they make at American Prices.

Think about it.  The math is not that hard to understand.   If a product is made overseas and shipped to the U.S. for sale, using expensive freighter costs, you would think that the end Retail Price on the store shelf would be more or at least the same as the U.S. manufactured equivalent.   It sounds good, but that is not the case.   In reality, the foreign goods shipped here are made so cheaply, that they can be shipped to the American Coast and travel inland to stores everywhere and be sold at half the price of the U.S. equivalent.     That does not make any sense on any calculator.   That is not the world economy at work.   That is much nearer to slavery and outright usury.

Poor Quality is now the norm.  Decent Quality is now considered high priced.  All because of foreign goods produced by companies who do not hold American interests high against their own greed.

Buying American Made Products, produced, and manufactured right here puts money right back into our own peoples pockets, where it can do the most good.  Americans promote their own economic health and empower their own households and communities when they buy American Made first. 

If a product is made in the USA, or even overseas, know the difference between a good quality product and a poorly made product passed off on you as some kind of discounted deal.  Just remember, there is no such thing as a free lunch.